Sunday, March 13, 2011

Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities #3

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities #3” [Hake (2011c)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to “Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities” [Hake (2011a)], PhysLrnR's Bill Goffe wrote (paraphrasing): “I agree that teaching should be more valued, but economists Martin & Gillen (M&G) (2011) do a nice job in explaining why this seems unlikely in the near future.”

M&G observe that there's a thriving market for senior scholars in higher education but not for world-class teachers. The reason for this imbalance, they suggest, is that “potential employers of professors have sufficient information to judge scholarly productivity, but virtually no information that would allow them to judge teaching productivity.”

In commenting on M&G's article, “teaching postdoc” wrote:(paraphrasing): “How do we know when a teacher is ‘good’? Students know if they like or dislike a teacher; if they enjoyed or did not enjoy a course. But accurately assessment one's own progress is a very difficult task, and there's no evidence that course evaluations are meaningful. Really, one needs pre- and post-testing to quantitatively compare student abilities at the beginning vs end of the course. Almost no one actually does that. . . . .Scholarship is measured in papers and citations. Teaching is not measured at all.”

Regarding pre/post testing, Bill Goffe asked: “. . . . do any physicists use their students’ Force Concept Inventory (FCI) results when on the job market?” As far as I know, the answer is (thankfully) "NO."If pre/post testing were to be used for high-stakes summative purposes, then Campbell’s and Dunkenfeld’s Laws (see signature quotes) would probably rear their ugly heads so as to distort and corrupt the testing.

Campbell's Lawhttp://bit.ly/hMsyUr: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processesit is intended to monitor.

REFERENCES [URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 13 March 2011.]

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/eqw6ow. Post of 4 Mar 2011 08:04:14-0800 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and PhysLrnR.The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists and are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/hnkAuJ with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011b. “Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities #2,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/gZSf8W. Post of 6 Mar 2011 15:16:50 -0800 to AERA-L & Net-Gold.The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists and are also online on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/dYSgww with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2011c. “Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities #3,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/gSNTGi. Post of 12 Mar 2011 16:53:33-0800 to AERA-L & Net-Gold.The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists.